One of the dirty secrets of B2B sales is that many B2B organizations are losing lots of new business leads and wasting a significant amount of time by chasing the wrong leads.
Despite all the money that many companies spend on marketing and sales headcounts, much of this investment is going to waste. Why? Because too many B2B companies are not doing a good enough job of qualifying their new sales leads.
At many organizations, when a new inbound sales lead contacts the company for the first time, they get shuffled through an indifferent, standardized process that doesn’t do anything to bring the new lead “into” the organization’s sales funnel. Or worse, all of the new sales leads are treated the same – even though not all leads are equal.
As a result, salespeople spend too much time chasing after leads who aren’t a fit for your product or service, while good sales opportunities fall through the cracks.
This is such a pernicious situation because it wastes your company’s time and resources on both ends of the spectrum – giving too much sales team attention to people who aren’t ready for it, while unintentionally ignoring promising sales leads who are already serious buyers.
Does this problem sound familiar to you? If so, read on for key insights and tips on how to get the most out of your new sales leads – while conserving time, saving money, and boosting results.
Pre-Qualify Your Sales Leads
When a new inbound sales lead contacts your company for the first time, what happens? Who answers the phone or responds to the email? Are they unceremoniously shuffled off to the sales team, or do they have an initial phone conversation with an admin assistant with no formal sales training?
New sales leads are precious and require careful treatment and handling. You need to start that first conversation with your sales lead by asking them some pre-qualifying questions to assess how ready they are to buy, and figure out the best way to help them. For example:
- How did you find out about us?
- What motivated you to contact us today?
- What issues or problems are you having with your current solution?
- How are these issues or problems affecting your overall business operations?
- How soon do you think you might be ready to make a decision?
Please note that all of these questions are non-confrontational and low-pressure – and none of them are “yes/no” questions!
They are all designed to elicit more information from the prospect and draw them into sharing more about their problems so you can assess the situation and determine the right approach.
Set Up a Consistent Process for Lead Qualifying and Ranking
Once you have your pre-qualifying questions figured out (choose questions that make the most sense for what you sell and how your customers buy; these are just examples), you need to set up a clear and consistent process for managing new sales leads as they contact your organization.
For example:
1. Collect inbound sales leads (use any and all possible channels that make sense for your product or service, such as a dedicated email address, phone number, social media account, website chat, or online demo request form – create a place for new sales leads to contact your company where they won’t get lost and where you can have them all in one place for easy follow-up).
2. Have an initial pre-qualifying conversation by phone. As described above, this helps you determine which leads are “serious buyers” who are urgently ready to start the sales process, and which ones are just beginning their research and need more time to build confidence before they buy.
3. Use “lead scoring” to determine whether the sales lead is a higher priority (“A”) or lower priority (“B” or “C”) lead. This can be subjective or inexact, but you need to at least make an attempt to rank your sales leads.
4. Assign high-priority leads for immediate follow-up; defer lower-priority leads for long-term nurturing.
Nurture Your Leads Over Time
Once your leads are sorted and ranked, you can start the longer-term process of nurturing your leads that are not yet ready to start the buying process.
Do this by using a customer relationship management (CRM) system or, if your budget doesn’t allow, with a simple spreadsheet. Use this system to keep track of your conversations with each prospect and follow up over time with additional support, research, data, demos, or whatever supplemental information your prospect needs to make a decision.
Lead nurturing is about building trust and patiently establishing a relationship over time – even if it takes months or years.
Sales leads are a precious commodity. Every time someone contacts your organization with an inquiry or response to an ad, that is a sign that your company’s valuable marketing dollars are bringing an ROI. So don’t let it go to waste!
By pre-qualifying your leads, sorting and ranking your leads with a consistent process, and then nurturing your long-term leads (while following up immediately with the “right” sales leads who are ready to start the sales process), your company will stop wasting time, stop losing leads, and start getting better sales results.